Barney's Blog

Bizarre Office 2013 Licensing

Getting a pilot's license takes months of study and lots of practice. Being in compliance with some software licenses can take the same effort. All the gotchas are in fine print and legalese.

And sometimes the licenses are just bizarre. Take the free version of Office you get when you shell out about $800 for a Surface RT machine as an example. This Student version can be used as much as you like, provided you don't work for an actual office.

Business use is verboten. So if your shop buys one of these tablet/laptops, you can write your term papers and love letters, but stuff your memo in a sack. For that you must buy one of three separate licenses. Or, if you have a license for Office 2013 for another machine, you are good to go.